


Omri

by justalittlegreen



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anal Sex, First Time, Fucking, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Acting Like a Married Couple, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova are in Love, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani is an Incurable Romantic, Language, Love Language, M/M, Slap Slap Kiss, Submissive Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Top Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Wrestling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:48:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28675476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justalittlegreen/pseuds/justalittlegreen
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 12
Kudos: 154





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueerOnTilMorning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueerOnTilMorning/gifts).



It was clear from the beginning that immortality did not mean invincibility. Immortal did not mean invulnerable. Did not mean inviolable. The extent to which Nicolo could ignore pain was only the result of a warrior's path, the practice of life by a thousand cuts. And bruises. And bullet wounds.

_When Nile asked if there were ways to die that were worse than others, he paused with the sink running, the soapy dish in his hands, and said, "The worst way to die is alone."_

_Niles, still fresh off the pack of her platoon, had nodded. "I guess that's the advantage you two have," she'd said, her eyes just barely shifting toward the corner where Yusef sat with Andy, one leg sprawled over the arm of the chair, laughing at something._

_"Yeah." The soft weight of Nicky's voice held a thousand years of tenderness. "But, of course, it means you can hurt twice as much."_

Nicky loses decades the way most people lose an hour in their memories. They all do; there's a limit to what the mind can hold, even if there seems to be no limit on what the body can endure. But where the particular music and fashions of the world are lost, Joe is always there. Joe is his tether, his throughline. Seven languages between them, and only one holds the word for what Joe is to him - fitting that it's Arabic. _Omri._ My lifetime. My whole life. They've had as many names for each other as centuries they've lived through - "Nicky" is hardly his favorite, but it'll pass - but their mother tongues still cradle them in casual endearments and battle instructions. Time hasn't touched their bodies, but there must be some word for the ways in which they've become like mountains, weathering together, shifting imperceptibly, until they fit as if they were forged that way. They don't tell the others about the dreams they've shared since the beginning, how even in sleep, they're gifted with each other.

It's not that they don't quarrel - just ask the year they lost over who was responsible for leaving an open sack of grain in their storehouse and the subsequent rat problem - but the only fight that mattered was the first one, the fight to accept their own inevitability.

Yusef won that one.

Whole decades, Nicky's lost, probably a century's worth, but the sight of Yusef on his knees, hands down, palms open, his chin tilted up defiantly, his beard catching dust in the wind lives in his bones as much as his memory. Nicolo had stood there, sword in hand, disbelieving. He slashed Yusef's throat. Watched Yusef go down. Heal. Crawl back to his knees. Say something in the language Nicolo was almost beginning to understand, the way he understood the babble and rush of a familiar stretch of river. Bared his neck again, and waited.

_"I was waiting for you to figure it out," Yusef would tell him later, a century on, after a private language emerged between them, a melodic mélange of Arabic and Zeneize, peppered with words borrowed from other lands and tongues. "I couldn't explain it to you any other way."_

_"What was it you were waiting for me to realize?"_

_"That not only could I not die, I also could not leave you."_

Their first shared dreams were remnants of the battles they'd fought from opposing sides. Then, a dancer's rehash of the private one between them. Then finally came the morning when they woke on opposite sides of their shared fire with a single ache and a blush that spread through Nicolo like flames.

_"I felt the same way," Yusef told him once._

_"You didn't look it," Nicolo said, still grousing at the embarrassment two centuries later._

_Yusef only shifted his gaze to the backs of his hands, studying the shade of his skin and shrugging. "Maybe not," he said, "but how could I not, after I'd spent the night dreaming myself into your arms?"_

They'd lasted an entire day, until they'd built the fire again. Their fingertips touched as they stuffed scraps of bark under the bigger twigs and Yusef looked up, his mouth just slightly open until Nicolo looked back. By silent mutual agreement, they claim not to remember who leaned in first to kiss the other.

_"Had you ever done it before?" Nicolo asked him. "With another man?"_

_Yusef had shaken his head. "The first I ever considered it was when that dream showed me what to do. If I moved with any confidence it was with the knowledge that I apparently already knew how."_

Nicolo remembers how the skin beneath their clothes was whole shades lighter than their faces and forearms, how Yusef's mouth tasted like ash and game, how he still wanted to drink from it. How cleverly Yusef's hand moved beneath his tunic, at once familiar and strange. Yusef's curiosity at the loose skin under his fingers, the way his hand felt achingly familiar, all callus and leather. Nicolo's utter desperation to be unraveled. Their fumbling boldness, wrestling each other to stillness, until Nicolo took him the first time, blasphemy on his tongue, holiness in his hands. The way Yusef, hose around his ankles, demanded to know his name before allowing him any further, then proceeded to weep with it once they were joined. The way he came apart with Nicolo's blood on his lips and hunger in his eyes.

If immortality couldn't spare them the pain of living, at least it also granted them the pleasures.

The neglected fire died early that night. Nicolo woke with his back to Yusef's chest and felt warmer than he had in months.

They don't talk much about the years before Andy found them. About their agreement to steer clear of their homelands, how they wandered, looking for a place to settle. The small house they built, a few miles off one of the trade trails. It didn't occur to either of them that there could be a purpose beyond survival, a reason. They hunted and fished. Nicolo started a garden. Yusef fashioned an instrument out of a hollow gourd and metal strings and taught himself to play some of the beautiful, haunting tunes he'd grown up with.

There were the months - a blink, barely - of frenzied lovemaking, of learning each others' bodies and their pleasures. Nicky realized that dying was less horrible when the first thing he could feel were Yusef's hands cupping his cheeks as he came back. For weeks after battles and missions, they'd ride as hard as they could to get home, starting before sunrise and not stopping until after dark, until they could hear the familiar music of the stream near their home.

_"Take me," Yusef begged after a brutal interrogation during which they'd been separated for months before Andy and Quynh had managed to free them. "Those bastards had me far too long, hayati, but I was yours the whole time."_

_Nicolo took his time, blessing each of Yusef's knuckles and callouses, settling his weight on top of him as Yusef pulled his legs up and wrapped them in a crush around his hips. They'd kissed until their teeth sparked, rutting against one another with a desperation Nicolo hadn't felt since the last time Yusef had tried to kill him. By the time he stretched Yusef open, they were both weeping into one another's shoulders, clutching and shaking. Yusef broke first, Nico's name cracking out of his throat as Nicolo stroked him between their stomachs. He couldn't hold on after that, his own need finally sated._

At first, Nicolo resented the life that drew them away from the place they'd made together, but time showed them other joys: Cyprus. Crete. Malta. They always retreated somewhere warm after a job. It grew both easier and harder as time went on, but Yusef maintained that he had no home but Nicolo, his beloved, his _omri_.

It was clear from the beginning that immortality did not always mean inevitability (though Andy would say otherwise.) That despite a series of enduring truths, the world would continue to change in ways they did not expect or control. In the storm of it, however, there would always be harbors. Protectors. Places they could belong. Nicolo never took for granted that his traveled with him, curling at his back as he'd done for almost a thousand years.


	2. Chapter 2

Old habits die hard, or never at all. The same combination of intuition and pattern that allows them to fight like a single eight-limbed beast when necessary follows them to bed. Nicky can tell from a single, innocuous look across the dinner table, that the night will end with Joe begging for release, clutching at his back and bruising his lips against Nicky's teeth. Nicky assents to the plan in the way he lifts his water glass, a language of gestures a thousand years in the making.

Joe shoulder-checks him in the hallway, the opening in a chess match. Nicky already knows the final play; the question is how they'll get there. The impatient bump in the hallways says, _Make me, Di Genova._

Nicky smirks, letting Joe get just ahead of him before slipping a finger through a belt loop and giving him a sharp yank back. _You're not in charge, fucker._

He can feel Joe's outstretched fingers the second before he feels his shirt twisted in Joe's fist and ducks and turns before Joe can get purchase. _We both know how this ends. What are you playing at, al-Kaysani?_

By the time they reach the bedroom, Nicky's had enough, and by the way he lets Nicky pin his wrists behind his back against the wall, Joe's had enough playing, too. 

There are still moves to be made, though. Without losing sight of the endgame, Joe slides down the wall to his knees and looks up expectantly. Nicky shakes off the impulse to knee him in the face and grabs his hair instead, twisting and pulling Joe's face against his thigh, savoring the words folded into the answering groan _. You know me so well._

Nicky pulls Joe to his feet by his hair and hip-checks him into the wall, sliding his thigh neatly between Joe's. _Letting me lead tonight, mi amor?_

Joe shamelessly rocks against Nicky, sliding a free hand up the front of his shirt. _And when have I been able to hide anything from you, hayati?_

Nicky takes his time, dragging Joe's head to the side so he can savor the skin of his neck, taut and sensitive, the soft brush of Joe's beard on his cheek. Never.

He drops a hand and skims it along the bulge in Joe's pants, savoring the soft groan that thrums against his lips. He pulls back in time to catch the look on Joe's face, a naked plea. _You're not even going to kiss me?_

Nicky snorts and flicks his cheek for being so incurably transparent. Joe doubles down, licking his lips and leaving his jaw slack, inviting. _Take me to bed._

Nicky relents. There's only so far stubbornness will get him when Joe begs.


End file.
